Headspace: when we think about how the amazing capabilities of the mind to imagine and agility of the brain to calculate, reason and deduce, we always imagine it to be an electrifying place to be. It should and always be.
Shake’s Headspace 2014 is about how we connect with these abilities, how we learn and how the brain and mind should be maintained as healthy places. Shake thought about the brain and mind in relation to the human spirit and the well being of the body.
Environment and relationships will influence how the headspace interprets and creates the world we live in. So all that said what did Shake Headspace discover or reveal?
For one week we explored how the education system and the environment young people learn. Often learning is exciting. Often they feel stressed and pressurised. We spoke about how when a regimented, conformist, often discriminatory hyper-consumerist and oversexualised society becomes too much, confidence and esteem are so affected, the body will react. The human spirit might be distracted but the mind is an amazing thing and will create all kinds of coping mechanisms to keep the body alive and “safe”. Here is where assessing and taking care of our mental well being comes into play.
We heard stories of first hand experiences with medication for depression and many shared other less mentally aggressive means to get through another day. Sharing our day to day sanity self maintenance was one of the weeks highlights, along with the brilliant games to provoke discussions and debate which inspired some very cool creative work.
Through images, poetry and film, we unpacked one of the most crowded places on the planet – inside our heads. Orla Prices image, which we have used for all Shake August 2014 promotion, is a perfect illustration for our headspace inquiry.
Here is the video of Shake! poets group piece that the Shake! filmmakers produced with our brilliant film duo, Dershe and Patrice from NuWave Productions.
“Dear Beauty” puts the system we live under in the spot light and praises the subtle energy of the human spirit resisting modern day pressures.
Powerful stuff as usual…
Dear Beauty Amongst the RubbleEternally conflictedI pray for the dayThey tell you that your beauty can only take you so farI am breaking throughBurning up insideThe base of a tool you proclaim necessaryThe weight of thousands on meLost on earth my forefathers reigned the landMy existence displaces that which came before meabused so freely with confidentialityyou created meA fever constantly risingyou created meYour power can beat me?I might be forgotten, faded nowbut the Earth used to be mineyes I look happy, I feel yellowBut they don;t tell you without their version of beautyyou’re given permanent scarHow does my thinness grow green out of this dense grey?The wind blows the tuneThe gentle flower dances happily